People should be a little less thin-skinned. It's not important.
Seconded
Alternatively people could learn to read and understand the discussion
before firing in an off target response. The discussion wasn't about
being hurt, it was about:
1. Distribution evangelism isn't helpful to the original poster
2. partial or incomplete responses fired in early can prevent others who
might have been prepared to give a useful answer, not to.
Subsequently the original poster doesn't get the help they were
searching for so they go elsewhere. Not because they were "hurt" by your
response but because they didn't get satisfaction, the list failed to
service their need. I.E myself and others believe that is the answer to
the original question that prompted this thread "why is slug membership
showing a decline".
So now you'll probably respond with some glib "well if your not prepared
to put up with the grit that you get when posting to a mailing list you
probably should un-subscribe". Bingo! People are not participating
because, they consider their time to be more valuable than putting up
with the grit. It's not about being thick or thin skinned.
But you'll no doubt reply, "your the one asking for help, you can hardly
complain about the quality of the answers you get for free".
Wrong! If your objective is to build a community that discusses issues
about Linux and provides a forum to resolve problems that people are
having with Linux and therefore advance the adoption/use within the
community then you need both "questioners" and "answerers". And of
course roles reverse all the time. Sometimes I have questions and
sometime I can provided answers (well most times questions actually but
you get the point). No joy/satisfaction in being able to help someone by
providing answers if nobody is asking any questions because they are
tired of wading through the evangelism to find the answer.
It's just a theory, and my total study group comprises 1, but I'm am
tired of the evangelism and glib quick fired responses and have
considered un-subscribing. Perhaps, just perhaps others have already
felt this way and already done so. If this is the process of natural
self-selection, that only thick skinned people can be sluggers, then so
be it. If so called "thin-skinned" people like myself can't be sluggers
I guess I'll go elsewhere. (though I repeat I'm not hurt, I'm just bored
with the less than helpful answers department)
Mailing lists it appears go through a life cycle, when young and fresh
the information is very useful and people are very helpful. Others
discover this and the group grows. Then the list matures, usually when
the original participants move on in their life, the quality of answers
decline and the jesters appear. The jesters drive other participants
away with the opportunist responses and the list degrades
further.....What part of the life cycle is Slug at? Are you contributing
to the decline of slug? Or by acknowledging there are many different
"thickness" people, can Slug defy the trend of lists to decline?
P.
--
SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/
Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
